When Vimes was pointing the Gonne at the unarmed Cruces, it should've been empty. It was fired six times since Cruces last reloaded it: 1 - accidentally, while him and Vimes are fighting, 2 - Vimes gets it, shoots at Cruces, misses, 3 - shoots at a door, 4 - shoots at the ceiling, 5 - shoots at a chandelier, 6 - shoots a lock off. Yet, when Cruces is killed, the Gonne falls from his hands and fires at the floor.

Narrativium.

I actually noticed that! Remember, Cruces had two remaining sets of tubes. He fires five times outside, I believe, leaving one cartridge. Then he fires once and there's a long delay before he fires again (or was it he fires six times and there's a long delay)?

Even if we assume that Vimes was left with the second set of tubes we're still left with the question of when he could have had the chance to rearm.

At the end, the Gonne may have wrecked sufficient terror in the city as to have undergone a similar transition to the prototype train from Raising Steam, becoming a Physical God in mechanical form. Given adequate belief, gods never run out of thunderbolts.

Cuddy

Why'd Pratchett have to go and kill Cuddy? He was a great character and he would've been a great addition to the Watchmen in later books. /cry

Exactly for that reason. If you kill off a character with no potential, no reader cares.

Glint

Speaking of which, though we knew that the Gonne was in the tower, what was it that made the rest of the Watch realize that the glint up there wasn't Cuddy, thus saving Vetinari?

Intuition.

I assumed it was the fact that there was something glinting in the window at all. Cuddy would probably barely stick above the window sill.

Smashed Gonne

How is it that Carrot could smash the Gonne and yet still have it buried with Cuddy?

It was smashed, not atomized. The shell was still there.

He does it the same way that Mrs. Cake arms One-Man-Bucket with a piece of crockery in Reaper Man.

The Gonne had been repaired before, and it was strongly implied that the repairer could have reverse-engineered a second gonne. Carrot collected the broken pieces and buried them to prevent this happening again.

Discworld dwarves

When d'Eath is giving his history lesson to the other nobles at the start of the book, he very specifically mentions "Discworld dwarves." As opposed to what other kind?

Possibly Fairyland dwarves, although that a) veers heavily into Wild Mass Guessing (to begin with, whether there are such beings) b) still leaves the question of how d'Eath would know enough of them that he would think that it'd need specification.

Could be that one or more deities in Discworld's pantheon have dwarfs as his/her/its otherworldly servants, too.

i.e. as opposed to human 'dwarfs' - people whose limbs (for reasons of genetics?) do not grow to adult proportions. Since Discworld humans are the same they would have the same medical disorders.

He's just using too many words. People do that sometimes. Kind of like how the ads always say "Kellogg's Frosties" when they could have just said "Frosties".

But we don't talk about "Earth humans."

We do if we're as introverted and 'just a little off' as Edward d'Eath.

Indeed. Earth humans would not be at all unusual from certain conspiracy theorists.

We are told in other books that Angua's mere presence is enough to terrify and frighten other animals, especially dogs, into wary submission - they are intimidated by the presence of a werewolf. She could have used this power to break away from the Dogs' Guild? Yet it holds her prisoner on two occasions?

They also have her seriously outnumbered. Lone dogs probably still cringe from her, assuming they're not aware of her good nature like Gaspode or overwhelmed by libido like Mr. Fusspot.

Important, personal

When Carrot talks down Vimes with the Gonne, Vimes calls up both Cuddy and Angua as those harmed-and even killed-by the main criminal. Carrot claims that the important is not the same as the personal....and while I agree with the sentiment, I don't agree with that logic or that reasoning. Sometimes, what is personal is also important. Those feelings that Carrot felt for Angua from where I stand didn't seem like lies. That Cuddy was important to the Watch and to many wasn't a lie. It is personal, and he can't ignore that because it is so important. That hurts me a lot; I feel like I have to question if Carrot cares for Angua, or cared for Cuddy. That he would be willing to break someone for hurting people he is supposed to care about. I don't even care if he doesn't kill: I would want him to strike against someone who harmed those within the Watch-people I would imagine to be his friends and close confidants. Would he? Does he care about them? I don't see it as a lack of heroic tendencies to fight and care for the people that matter.

You are forgetting that Carrot has a very literal mind. Personal is not the same as important. That is it. They are not the same for him and sometimes you have to do the important thing before the personal. That is at least a way to not overthink and take it literally.

Fine, but because of that mindset, it is not hard to make a guess that he may not really care for Angua as much as he-or she-would like to, or that he doesn't understand in the slightest what True Companions are.

Well, he DID point out that he was fairly sure she wasn't actually dead. And he DID hesitate, down there in the sewers, when she first got shot. It's not that he doesn't care, it's that caring doesn't restrict his judgement. Angua, one way or another, is out of it, and Carrot needs to see to the living.

What he was referring to was not that a personal friend dying was not important. It was that the resulting desire to take personal revenge on Cruces was not as important as the idea that criminals must be prosecuted legally.

Put even more simply, Carrot is telling Vimes that there is no difference between Cruces killing Angua and Cuddy and Cruces killing anyone, period. That is, he's killed someone and that's terrible but it's not somehow worse because Carrot knew the victim.

Sometimes. Not always. That is what he is pointing out. And Carrot is too Lawful Good to attack in revenge.

When Angua was shot, Carrot didn't just hesitate to follow Vimes's order to leave her behind and chase Cruces: he flat-out disobeyed it. Carrot appears after Vimes has chased Cruces through the Assassin's Guild and all the way to the guildmaster's chambers. After the situation is resolved and they go down the stairs, we see that Angua's body is there. Carrot carried her throught the sewers, up a dozen flights of stairs through the ruins of the old city and left her out of the office; left, in fact, all personal feelings out. When he walks in there, he's only a policeman, ready to do what's important and arrest the murderer.

Remember Carrot's speech to Detritus about how Cuddy wouldn't want his troll buddy to forget he's a Watchmen for mere revenge? Carrot already let Angua down once, reaching for his sword when he saw her in wolf-form, and now she's possibly died to protect him. Why would he disappoint her by reaching for a weapon on gut-impulse again, any more than he'd let Detritus disappoint Cuddy? He's not going to hand the man who shot her any more of a victory, letting Cruces's crime make him compromise the simple decency Angua'd seen in him, or the good practices Vimes taught him.

Vimes and Angua's theory

This is fairly minor, but why is Vimes so skeptical of Angua's exploding-dragon "theory?" He himself pointed out the dragon smell at the Assassins' Guild, and saw their explosive potential just a few pages ago (and knew if it a whole book ago). It's a pretty obvious connection that he not only misses, but actually all but dismisses outright. Yeah, he has a lot on his mind, but Vimes really isn't the type to pick up the Idiot Ball so easily.

Because Angua is a w.. erewolf and he doesn't like the undead.

It just comes out of nowhere too much. It is plausible, but he isn't ready to agree to something like that without more evidence.

He's not dismissing that it's possible, just that it's definite. There are other things than dragons in Ankh-Morpork that smell funny and can explode; just ask the alchemists.

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